The potential for a major wildland fire in Bonny Doon and the Santa
Cruz Mountains varies from year to year, depending on the previous winter's
rainfall and storm damage, summer temperatures, humidity, etc. But
one thing is certain; the brush keeps growing, increasing the fuel load
in our forest every year.

We have not had major fire in Bonny Doon in over 50 years. Of
particular interest to many of us is the fire hazard incorporated in the
Ecological Reserve and its potential to lead to a conflagration of the
surrounding areas. There is a tentative plan to reduce fuels loads
and do controlled burning in the Reserve, but the final version of this
plan has not been approved by Fish and Game.

Captain Mike Gagarin is the vegetation manager for the California Department
of Forestry and works out of CDF's Felton headquarters. Burning in the
Reserve will be a cooperative effort between DFG and CDF. He will
discuss the Reserve's burn plan, as well as some of the fire history of
the Santa Cruz Mountains and the potential for a catastrophic wildland
fire. Questions from the audience are encouraged. This is a
good opportunity to educate ourselves about how we can effectively deal
with one of Bonny Doon's greatest blessings, the forest. A century of human
intervention has created a need to intervene further to protect the trees.
Moonscape has its place, let's keep it there.

Logging Returns to Bonny Doon

San Vicente Creek wends its way down from the headwaters reach in Bonny
Doon, miraculously gurgles through the blasted tunnel at the old quarry
on RMC lands, continues on down forested and grass-covered slopes past
the sleepy town of Davenport where it finally splashes under Hwy 1 and
runs out to sea. Along the way it provides water for the RMC quarry
operations, becomes the water supply for the town of Davenport and creates
habitat for a coho and steelhead run.

Now this multi-use watershed is about to be called upon to do even more.
Three timber harvest plans totaling more than 1000 acres will soon be conducted
along the banks of San Vicente Creek and its tributaries. All three
plans intend to draft water from this small north coast stream during the
summer months to water down dust on the logging roads.

RMC THP 01-439 SCR was approved last year along Jim Creek, a Class I
tributary of San Vicente. Now RMC has submitted a second plan (THP 1-03-042
SCR) of 700 acres which proposes to harvest trees along both San Vicente
and Reggiardo Creeks near Smith Grade. And Redtree Properties has submitted
a 278 acre timber harvest plan (THP 03-042 SCR) in the headwaters of San
Vicente near Empire Grade. All three plans propose drafting water
from the stream. The Public Hearings and Review Team meetings are
coming up for the Redtree and new RMC plans. To participate, contact
CDF at: 335-6740.

Waldorf, Neighbors, RBDA, Get Beyond Their Salad Days

Your RBDA Executive Board has been following the conflict between the
proposed expansion of the Waldorf School and the neighborhood interests
for some time now. You've heard some of the issues at RBDA general
meetings more than a year ago: noise, traffic, water and (most serious,
perhaps) the setting of precedent for instant redefinition of what rural
residential zoning is all about. This conflict, on which the Board
stayed neutral last year, threatened to erupt into a full-blown court case,
with both sides enlisting attorneys and negotiations between the sides
abruptly terminating earlier this year. The Board was lobbied to
take sides and render an opinion representing the RBDA position.
In our Minutes, we've been reporting on the very good presentations made
by both groups: in February we heard from a neighborhood group about the
downside of the expansion, and in April we heard how eager Waldorf is to
rectify any problems and be good citizens within the Bonny Doon environment.
Since Waldorf is a valued Bonny Doon asset of which we can be proud, but
Bonny Doon expansions are non grata to the RBDA, taking sides looked like
one of the toughest decisions we have ever had to make at the Board level.

In a remarkable turn of events (to which we like to think we contributed
a little), the neighborhood group and Waldorf decided to start talking
together again, sans representation (?), and met April 29 to see
if a local agreement could be reached. We hear from Chris Turzo,
the principal of Waldorf, that the meeting went "great," with the parties
all on the same page and with good prospects for convergence.
There apparently are still details to be worked out and the proper wording
to be inserted in agreements. From Hal Levin, of the neighborhood
group, we hear that he left the meeting "feeling positive and optimistic
for the future."

Still, while we're happy to see these folks getting together, the RBDA
has the obligation to look at another point of view: is this expansion
good for the global community of Bonny Doon? At those Board meetings
with the two sides, we asked them and each another tough questions about
the issues, and particularly the question of precedent. The EIR mitigations
filed by Waldorf and strongly subscribed to by them in their scheduled
expansion seem to solve most of the problems raised above, but the precedent
issue remains. Past promises about no future expansion made directly
to our Membership are now being ignored as the school continues to operate
with more students than its permit allows while the County continues to
look the other way. So the issues of trust and continuity are major
ones, and the Board will certainly look for assurances in black and white
that the current expansion will absolutely mark the end of revisionist
policies at the School. All concerned parties may have been green
and naive in our salad days, but now is the time to put the proper Waldorf
dish on the table.

Expect to see the long-awaited Board position paper on this in late
May.

RMC: Resource Management for Consumption

RMC's impacts our community's natural resources are getting re-evaluated,
not only in connection with their quarry and cement plant operations but
also in connection with new timber harvest proposals and water consumption
from San Vicente Creek.

In response to the County's requirement of an EIR for its proposed expansion
of Bonny Doon quarry, RMC is pursuing two strategies.
They have provided funds to the County to pay for the preparation of an
EIR on the expansion. Meanwhile they filed a legal brief appealing Superior
Court Judge Attack's ruling that supported the County's right to require
an EIR on the quarry expansion. The City of Santa Cruz has joined the County
in defending the case. The City wants proper review of the permits since
quarry operations are suspected of degrading the quality of water in Liddell
Spring, an important source of clean water for the City.

City and County attorneys have now responded with their brief dismantling
RMC's legal contrivances that supported their "vested right " to expand
their quarry. RMC complains that they have already submitted copious
documentation and studies but this is appropriate for an operation with
such a long history of large and far-reaching impacts on air and water
quality, quarry sites and the community. Under provisions of the State
Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (SMARA) the County can and should hire
someone to help process RMC's permits since SMARA allows these staff costs
to be passed along to RMC. RMC also wants to modify its State mandated
reclamation plan for the quarry because it has had limited success replacing
and re-establishing native vegetation that was removed as overburden.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the conveyor belt, the cement plant in
Davenport has sought to expand its production on a permanent basis. Each
year the plant has received County permission to temporarily increase its
production over the permitted tonnage, arguing that denial of the permit
would cause employee layoffs just before Christmas, not to mention that
Davenport needs the plant to consume its treated sewage effluent in its
cooling towers.

Last fall RMC applied for a permanent production increase and Supervisors
agreed but that decision was appealed to the Coastal Commission because
the impacts of the operation had never been given a five year review by
the County as required by their base coastal permit approval granted in
1990. Serious questions about dust, smokestack pollution and water consumption
need to be addressed before a production increase is allowed.

In the report prepared for an anticipated hearing at the Coastal Commission,
staff weighed in and agreed with appellants that there should be no permanent
expansion of production before the required review was performed. The appeal
was expected to be heard by the Coastal Commission at last week's meeting
in Monterey but has been put off. In the meantime the County accommodated
RMC by granting them yet another temporary permission to expand production
thereby bypassing public hearings. The County has however, sent RMC a letter
saying they must begin the long overdue review. There is clearly a need
for the quarry expansion and the plant production increase to be reviewed
simultaneously, consistent with the California Environmental Quality Act,
yet RMC's attorney calls this argument a "red herring."

Something fishy is truly involved in another resource issue: RMC's current
application to divert water from San Vicente Creek to a pond at the plant,
up to 30% of which is spilled, that is, not put to "beneficial use" so
the State Water Resources Control Board is requiring RMC to make application
for their water appropriation. This should lead to an examination of all
the water they divert from the stream, with the aim of determining just
how much they are entitled to take under the pre-1914 water rights they
claim.

Underlying the water consumption considerations are the findings of
researchers monitoring the fish migration near the bottom of San Vicente
Creek. Environmental consultants for the Trust for Public Land have been
trapping, counting and measuring fish during this migration season in response
to the NMFS discovery of fish in a poorly screened ag diversion pond.
A substantial number of fish are being found there, emphasizing the need
to protect their habitat from further degradation, especially in view of
RMC's recent proposal to harvest more timber on their property along San
Vicente Creek, a plan that includes water withdrawals from the creek.

RMC's employment of local residents and its contribution to the County
tax coffers are significant but as they expand their consumption of local
resources (and expand their profits) we hope they will turn more of those
profits to fund better environmental stewardship on their property and
also increase their contributions to local schools which are needing help
more than ever.

Deliver Comments Directly to Postal Execs

Three representatives of the United States Postal Service, plus a member
of Congresswoman Anna Eshoo’s staff, are coming to Bonny Doon to discuss
our concerns about postal service on this mountain. This special "town
hall" meeting will be held on Saturday, May 17, at 11:00 a.m. in
the Bonny Doon School's Multi-Purpose Room. Patty Kim, Anna Eshoo’s
assistant, will chair the meeting; postal emissaries will be Sam Vasquez,
Manager of Postal Service Operations for the 950-939 Area, who is based
in San Jose; Don Cattivera, Postmaster for Santa Cruz; and Dorothy Timewell,
who supervises the Santa Cruz contract carrier routes.

In a recent conversation Don Cattivera reported that Bonny Doon's contract
routes were moved, on May 6, from the Scotts Valley Post Office to the
main branch in Santa Cruz. They are being closely super-vised, says Mr.
Cattivera, and he believes we will see improvement in our delivery service.
This meeting is an opportunity - the best we may get - to bring our
complaints, frustrations, concerns, wishes, and also posi-tive comments
to the attention of those who, just possibly, can help us. One person's
wish list includes mail delivery by 5:00 p.m. on a reliable daily basis;
secure pillar boxes to guard against theft, or, failing that, at least
blue pick-up boxes for outgo-ing mail; and a phone number for a respon-sible
person to whom to report problems. If you're a concerned postal customer,
please come to the meeting and bring your own agenda items..

MEET YOUR CONGRESSWOMAN

Anna Eshoo will hold a town hall meeting on Saturday,
June 14, from 10-11:30 a.m., at the Bonny Doon School Multi-Purpose Room.

Pipeline Plans Alarm Property Owners

Water withdrawals from Majors and Laguna Creeks and Liddell Spring have
a long his-tory in Bonny Doon so the diversion dams and pipelines that
transport the water into the Santa Cruz water treatment plant are also
old, and leaky and failing, and needing a $40 mil-lion replacement.

A year ago City Water Department Director Bill Kocher came up to the
RBDA general meeting to apologize for trespassing by surveyors sent to
identify routes for a replacement pipeline. Improved communications were
promised, but nothing heard until last month when Kocher requested a meeting
with affected property owners and other interested parties like the RBDA
and Friends of the North Coast to present some of the options being considered.

The least disruptive method of rehabilitating the pipelines has already
been ruled out. It is called sliplining but it is not considered suitable
for pipes as old and deteriorated as these. Operating pressures are
too high and the process requires an opening at each of the many turns
in the line. Installing new pipe, precariously placed in or near stream
beds and along canyon walls, would be a difficult job, damaging to the
stream beds and to the riparian cor-ridor since trees have grown up along
the pipelines in the decades since the lines were laid, making it difficult
to replace the pipes in their present alignment.

A more technically attractive alternative involves pumping water from
the diversion dams up out of Majors and Laguna canyons and then burying
new pipe along existing roads that run down the ridge top meadows to join
the pipeline that follows Coast Hwy. 1 into town. That idea is not
well liked by property owners who live in the vicinity and are already
wary of the City's plans after the aborted brackish well proposal that
threatened to dewater their wells five years ago and followed up with the
more recent trespass. Another proposed route would require a new crossing
over sensitive habitat on State Park property.

Another factor with unknown implications was inserted into the planning
process when representatives of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)
visited the Laguna Creek Diversion dam last fall, where the City takes
the entire flow of the Creek for many months of the year. They determined
that the City's diversion was reducing and impairing rearing and spawning
habitat for steelhead trout. NMFS wrote the City Water Dept. asking them
to begin studies on stream flow and habitat restoration or face fines for
violations of the Endangered Species Act. Despite the fact that steelhead
were listed as an endangered species more than five years ago, Kocher wrote
to complain of NMFS’ "heavy handed " enforcement efforts.

The City wants to wait to undertake such studies of its water supply
diversions as part of its city-wide Habitat Conservation Plan. That process
will be years long. Meanwhile the City Water Dept. has placed a flow gauge
in the creek above the dam and negotiations with NMFS are currently under
way to determine an interim plan for the creek

MONSTER HOME HAS FIRST HEARING

A home of nearly 7000 sq. ft. is proposed for a salty site in front
of Sand Hill Bluff, which overlooks Laguna Beach. The siting of the house
violates several General Plan and Local Coastal Plan policies and regulations
that apply to buildings on agricultural land in the Coastal Zone. The hearing
will be on May 16th before the County Zoning Administrator and Planning
Dept. staff has recommended denial of the permit. Citizens
concerned with preserving ag land and the coastal viewshed can attend and
voice their support of the staff recommendation. The hearing begins
at 8:30 a.m. at the Board of Supervisors chambers on the fifth floor of
the County Building.

COAST DAIRIES PROPERTY TRANSFER APPROACHING

Trust for Public Land officials are looking over proposed deed restrictions
that would accompany the transfer of title to the state Department of Parks
and Recreation and the federal Bureau of Land Management. The deed restrictions
seek to prevent certain activities such as logging and mining that could
be proposed in the future and are an attempt to carry out the intentions
of the conservation oriented groups that facilitated the acquisition of
the property. The interim management plan for the property is scheduled
to be presented this month.

BUSH BENDING THE RULES

Senator Barbara Boxer has been holding hearings this week about a proposal
by the Bush Administration that would exempt the Department of Defense
and its contractors (such as Lockheed Martin which has a facility in Bonny
Doon) from rules designed to protect the environment

WATER AND PROPERTY RIGHTS, TAKE 2: COUNTY ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH DEPT.
ADOPTS NEW WELL POLICY

Property owners who seek to develop raw land generally start by drilling
a well to see if they have a reliable source of water before undertaking
the expensive and arduous task of obtaining building permits.

Recently however, John Ricker of County Environmental Health Services
instituted a new policy that requires permit applicants to obtain a septic
permit before a well permit is issued. This forces a property owner to
make a much greater investment in the planning process before he even knows
if he has water. Ricker says the policy is intended to identify siting
constraints and keep wells from being drilled and left unutilized since
County Code requires an unused well to be declared abandoned and destroyed
if not used for a year.

Property rights advocates however, believe the new policy is another
unnecessary infringement on their right to use their land and that the
intent of the well abandonment rules would be better served if the County's
time were spent locating and destroying abandoned wells already in existence
instead of further complicating the building process, especially with a
policy that hasn't been heard and approved by the Board of Supervisors.

Unlike other nearby counties, Santa Cruz never had a proactive well
destruction program in the past and inspection and supervision of well
drilling was lax. Many wells drilled in the County in earlier times do
not have the concrete sanitary seal that is now required on new wells.
This fact, as well as the deterioration of old steel well casings make
abandoned well shafts vulnerable conduits for contamination to be transported
down into the aquifer.

Bonny Doon's voice in preserving our special quality of life,
The Highlander, is mailed free to Bonny Doon residents prior to the
RBDA General Meetings, which are usually held on second Wednesdays
of
January, March, May, July, September and November.
We encourage you to participate.

Send mail correspondence to the Highlander Editor at the above
address,
or by email, below.